Against the backdrop of that continuity, you can also watch the pattern of growth unfold. At 7, all the kids are bubbly and energetic. At 14, they're all sullen and withdrawn. At 29, they're all emerging into the world.

I thought about the interplay between these two patterns -- constant personality, changing phases of growth -- during a visit to Mexico, last week. I was there to address the Real ID.

Europeans see things very differently. When I asked the Belgian delegate to ICA to show me his national "eID" smartcard, he was quick to point out that it's a read-only device. There's a certificate for digital signing but, apart from that, the card encodes only the same facts printed on its surface. Belgium wants its people, who are receiving these cards at the rate of 10,000 a month and who will all have them by 2009, to know that no secrets will be stored on (or transmitted by means of) the eIDs.

There's also a youth version of the eID. When Belgian children turn 12, they'll receive a smartcard and a reader from the government. Americans would regard this program as an Orwellian intrusion. For Belgians, it's a way to help protect kids without necessarily compromising their privacy. One of the first uses of the youth eIDs will be to prove age to age-restricted Web sites.

How that's done is a matter of choice, but there's no technical requirement to fully disclose identity and a strong cultural preference not to. Kids will need only prove (by authenticating to the card) that they are citizens, and prove (by selectively disclosing their birth date) that they meet the age requirement.

On the other end of the spectrum, the New Zealand delegate told me that Kiwis hate national IDs even more than Americans do. You can present one persona to one government agency and a different persona to a different agency. Of course, high-tech credentials can support this approach, too. The maturation of identity technology creates a range of possible protocols. How we implement them will depend very much on who we are.

PCW Evaluation Team

I would recommend this device for families and small businesses who want one safe place to store all their important digital content and a way to easily share it with friends, family, business partners, or customers.

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